CONGRESS, U. S. 



283 



and should urge that dangerous political here- 

 sies were taught in those schools, such as the 

 higher law doctrine and various other wild and 

 extravagant notions, tending to disqualify men 

 for self-government, and to array them against 

 the Constitution of our country; and that 

 therefore these schools are at war with the 

 spirit of our free institutions, and must be put 

 down. Might not the gentleman from Massa- 

 chusetts with great propriety interrogate me 

 thus : ' Sir, have you any property or interest in 

 Massachusetts ? ' ' None whatever.' ' Were you 

 ever there ? ' ' Never.' ' Do you desire to go 

 there ? ' ' Not at all ; I am satisfied to live in 

 Kentucky.' 'Do you ever expect to be in 

 Massachusetts ? ' ' No.' ' Why then concern 

 yourself about our local institutions ? ' ' Ah, 

 but you forget, I am engaged in a philanthropic 

 line of business; that is all.' [Laughter.] 

 ' Well, sir, perhaps you had better turn your 

 attention to Kentucky. I have known men to 

 show much good sense and acquire fine for- 

 tunes by simply attending to their own busi- 

 ness ; but no man ever manifested the one or 

 secured the other by intermeddling with and 

 giving his time to matters which no way con- 

 cerned him. All that ever was accomplished 

 in that way has been to annoy others and ben- 

 efit nobody.' How would I respond to that 

 argument of my friend ? I think I should ' give 

 it up,' and immediately move to lay the bill 

 upon the table. 



" Now, that is exactly a parallel case with 

 this. It is manifest that the Constitution of 

 the United States secures to each State the 

 right to have or not to have the institution of 

 slavery just as essentially so as it does the 

 right to regulate your own common school 

 system. We have no more right to make war 

 upon the institution of slavery than upon any 

 other local institution. The Constitution se- 

 cures to each State the right of regulating its 

 own domestic institutions ; and it must neces- 

 sarily protect slavery, as certainly as it protects 

 your own common school system. Our wisest 

 men, the President of the United States, the 

 heads of departments, and Congress, having 

 with united voice declared that we have no 

 constitutional power upon the subject, how 

 are you to escape from the difficulty ? 



" Sir, the Union cause in the border States 

 has already lost more strength by the agitation 

 of this question in Congress, at this session, 

 than was lost by the defeat of our arms at Bull 

 Run. Gentlemen should take care, lest in their 

 great zeal to strike off the bonds of the slave 

 they should be preparing chains and slavery 

 for themselves and posterity. 



" Sir, the fearful responsibility, the deep 

 guilt and crime, of plunging this great country 

 into all the horrors of civil war and bloodshed, 

 does not rest alone upon the leading secession- 

 ists of the South ; a full share of that criminal 

 guilt is justly chargeable to the leading disunion 

 abolitionists of the North. If this Government 

 shall outride the angry storms now threatening 



its destruction, and the fearful day of just ret- 

 ribution shall come, may it not be justly said 

 to these leading spirits from the North and the 

 South : You have been co-workers in the at- 

 tempt to destroy the Government of your 

 country You of the North sought to dissolve 

 the Union of these States, professedly to de- 

 stroy slavery. You of the South sought to dis- 

 solve it, professedly to protect slavery. You 

 were both disunionists all rebels against the 

 Government. As State after State plunged 

 into the gulf of disunion, your shouts of tri- 

 umph from the North rose up and met the 

 peals of joy from the South. You have smitten 

 a great country with desolation and waste. 

 You have crimsoned fields with kindred blood. 

 You have filled the whole land with weeping 

 widows and orphans. In guilt and crime you 

 have been banded together, like Siamese twins, 

 through life, and you ought not to be separated 

 in death. It is but just that you should expiate 

 your enormous crime together, on the same 

 scaffold, and together be buried in the same 

 traitors' grave." 



The resolutions were then referred to the 

 Committee on the Judiciary : ayes, 77 ; noes, 57. 



In the Senate on the 16th, Mr. Ten Eyck, 

 of New Jersey, offered the following resolution, 

 which was laid on the table and ordered to be 

 printed : 



Resolved, That the present war is for the Union, ac- 

 cording to the Constitution ; that its object is to save 

 the former and enforce the latter was so in the begin- 

 ning, is now as carried on, and should be, to the last; 

 that measures, extreme and radical, disruptive in 

 themselves, involving in a common fate as well the 

 loyal as disloyal, should not be resorted to ; and that 

 in crushing treason wide-spread and hateful as it is 

 the Government itself cannot prove traitor to or- 

 ganic law. 



Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, offered the fol- 

 lowing, which was agreed to : 



Resolved, That the Committee on Military Affairs 

 and the Militia be instructed to inquire into the ex- 

 pediency and propriety of establishing by law a uni- 

 form mode of dealing with the si;, ye ; of rebels escaping 

 from their masters, or taken as pi is jners by our Army. 



Mr. Sumner, of Massachusetts, offered the 

 following resolution, which was agreed to : 



Resolved, That the Committee on Patents and the 

 Patent Office be directed to consider if any further 

 legislation is necessary in order to secure to persons 

 of African descent, in our own country, the right to 

 take out patents for useful inventions, under the Con- 

 stitution of the United States. 



Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois, offered the follow- 

 ing resolution : 



Resolved, That the Secretary of State be directed to 

 inform the Senate whether, in the loyal States of the 

 Union, any person or persons have been arrested and 

 imprisoned and are now held in confinement by orders 

 from him or his Department; and, if so, und'er what 

 law said arrests have been made, and said persons im- 

 prisoned. 



Mr. Dixon, of Connecticut, expressing his re- 

 gret that the resolution had been introduced, 

 said : " What are the arrests which the resolu- 

 tion proposes to consider ? They are well known 



